


Cold Dark Deep

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Car Accidents, Drowning, Gen, Hypothermia, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 05:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14826507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: What's a little plunge into the East River between friends.





	Cold Dark Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/gifts).



"Look, I hate to break it to you, Carter, but this one's all on you."

"You utter wanker," Peggy said, and Jack smirked at her. "I bought lunch _yesterday,_ and brought it to you wrapped up nicely, no less."

"Yeah, but I bought lunch for the office three days running before that, so the way I figure it, you're two down at this point --"

"Oh, that would be when you sent _me_ to pick it up, on Monday?"

"I was footing the bill," Jack said cheerfully, turning onto the Brooklyn Bridge. "You were just doing the legwork. I could've sent Jones, you know."

It was strange being back in New York, Peggy thought as she glanced up at the high, arching span of the bridge. A temporary state of affairs, but Jack _was_ technically still her boss, and she _was_ still attached to the New York office. Technically. But there was only so long she could claim "vacation" or "special loan to the L.A. office," and both she and Jack had been in L.A. for months while he recovered from his shooting and rebuilt the strength to travel. She and Daniel had talked about it quietly, and both of them agreed that it was probably best if she went back to New York with Jack, just for a little while. Until they were both confident no one was gunning for him. They'd been operating under the assumption that the shooting was because of the M. Carter file, not because of Jack himself, but ... no sense taking chances.

And there were still long-distance telephone calls, and there was work to keep her busy ...

"Base to Peggy," Jack said.

"I was merely trying to decide how to respond," she said, "since it appears that you consider Agent Jones and myself interchangeable, I don't know exactly what to tell you --"

She heard the noise -- loud, like a car backfiring -- at the same instant as the SSR car jerked violently sideways. Peggy flung a hand forward, catching herself on the dashboard, and thinking with the part of her brain _not_ concerned with their alarming sideways rotation that it would be handy if cars came equipped with something to stop one from hurtling through the windshield on a sudden stop --

"Son of a bitch," Jack snarled, fighting the wheel as the car spun on the slick pavement of a New York winter. 

And then they crashed through the guard rail and were airborne.

The car flipped and was suddenly full of a blizzard of flying papers, the files that had been in the backseat. And then they hit the water like slamming into concrete.

Down and in and underwater. Peggy was not entirely sure, for an instant, which way was up; the car was upside down, she was fairly sure from the way she was currently tumbled in a cramped position on what she thought was its ceiling. The light, filtered through the water, was gray and strange.

It was water that jarred her out of her dazed state, ice-cold water pouring onto her from a dozen small gaps in the vehicle's frame.

"Jack!"

She gripped a double handful of his coat, not entirely sure where his head was or what part of him (knee? elbow?) was jabbing her in the side, and shook him, hard. A groan was her only answer.

His side of the car had taken the brunt of their violent plunge through the guardrail. It was also possible he'd actually been shot, but she wasn't going to think about that. There was already more than a foot of water in the car, collecting in the downward-slanted part of the roof, pulling them down faster. They were upside down with their nose tilted downward, probably because the engine was weighing them down.

"Jack," she snapped, shaking him again. Keeping hold of him with one hand, she reached for the door handle. The door resisted her attempts to open it. Jammed? Locked? Or the pressure of all that water on the other side, holding it pressed shut ...

The ice-cold water was growing deeper, filling the car.

"Jack!" She found his head by feel, her fingers coming away sticky and wet with something warmer than the bitterly cold water of the East River. He'd hit his head in the fall. That, or been shot. Either way, they were both in trouble if they didn't get out of the car.

"Jack," she said, patting his face, "you're going to have to hold your breath. Do you hear me?"

He groaned something incomprehensible, at least she thought he did. The car was half full of water now. She was going to have to do _something,_ and the door still wouldn't open.

She drew a few deep breaths to work up her courage, then doubled up her body and uncoiled, lashing out with both feet at the window. It resisted and then shattered. Water flooded into the car, so bitterly cold as it swamped her body that it nearly caused her to lose the air she'd inhaled.

Next to her, Jack came awake with a sudden thrashing of limbs. _And at the worst possible time, too ..._ She seized hold of him, dragging him with her. She meant to take them both out the window, however she could manage it, but the door opened easily now, with the interior of the car full of water.

Jack was still thrashing. Peggy gave him a hard shake, and he stopped fighting, at least with quite so much vigor.

It was very dim. She had no idea how deep they were, and no idea, for a terrible panicked instant, how to find the surface. Then she thought of the obvious, and let a little air escape her mouth, and followed the bubbles.

They splashed to the surface an endless moment later. Jack had stopped fighting entirely, and was now a deadweight drifting in the water, half on top of her. She shook him and then tried smacking his face, and he jerked, gave a sudden choking cough, and gasped out, "Carter?"

"None other."

"God," he groaned. "What the hell ... I can swim, you know."

"I assume they wouldn't let you in the Navy without it. Do lie still and don't make a lot of bother out of this."

He might have protested further about being dragged through the water, but another cough doubled him up and then he just shuddered with his efforts to breathe.

He _wasn't_ well; she knew it, Daniel knew it, the only person who didn't seem to know it was Jack, who'd insisted on coming back to New York as soon he could do a passable impression of a person who hadn't been shot in the chest. She could imagine few things worse for him than inhaling water on top of the trauma his lungs had already suffered. 

Under other circumstances, she would have let him swim on his own anyway, but in this case she was very well aware that he didn't have much swimming in him, and with the bitter chill of the water drawing the strength from her limbs, she might not have another water rescue in her, either.

Jack seemed to be aware of this as well, because he wasn't struggling.

She dragged them both out onto something rocky and beachlike, clutching at Jack as they stumbled and fell in the cold gray light of a winter afternoon. Jack was shaking and wheezing as he struggled for air, somewhere between a coughing fit and simply gasping for breath.

"You're wrong, you know," he gasped out at last.

"About what?" Peggy panted, flopped limply on the shore. She was freezing cold, she knew she ought to get up, but it seemed too much work at the moment.

"The Navy." He panted for a minute before going on, "Plenty of men ... can't swim. Hordes of 'em. Me, I was on ... Cornell swim team --"

"Jack," she wheezed out, "for the love of God, kindly _do_ shut up."

Silence, briefly, except for his labored breathing, and then his hand found her arm and patted her clumsily a few times.

"Lunch," he panted, "is on me."

 

***

 

It was with effort, shivering and leaning on each other, that they made their way at last to an occupied warehouse along the shoreline, and a car was summoned.

While waiting for it, they huddled in the warehouse office in front of a blasting furnace, wrapped in blankets and clutching cups of coffee brought by worried dockside stevedores (who didn't seem to know what to make of Peggy in her trousers and with her hair straggling like the fur of a drowned rat; she wasn't in a mood to offer them a convenient explanation).

Jack was still coughing, and Peggy tried not to be too worried by this. She decided to keep a close eye on him for the next few days in case of symptoms of pneumonia. That water was _not_ clean.

"What did you hear?" Jack asked her quietly -- or as quietly as he was capable at the moment, in between bouts of coughing, when no one was near. He had a wadded-up handkerchief pressed to his forehead, which was still sluggishly bleeding. "Before."

"A gunshot. Rifle, perhaps."

He nodded briefly, then winced as if that had been a mistake. "Same," he said through clenched teeth. "They shot out a tire."

"It could be someone after me _or_ you, or SSR agents in general. It could be Dottie."

Another brief nod. "Could be. Could be someone's gunning for me in particular."

"If so, they're a rather poor assassin." She offered him a smile and patted his knee; he looked not just miserable but lost in a dark mood. "That's twice they've missed."

"Great," Jack muttered. "I get the incompetent assassin."

"Better than the competent one."

Jack coughed again, but there was the faintest flash of a smile. "Going back to L.A.?" he asked after the cough settled down, pressing a fist to his chest. "Less risk of hypothermia there."

"Hardly," Peggy scoffed. "We've an incompetent assassin to catch."

He was grinning at her now, before a cough interrupted him.

**Author's Note:**

> Seat belts on cars didn't become standard until the late 1950s, and were completely unknown in the 1940s.


End file.
